"BTW, this photo also illustrates why you can't determine an LOP at sunrise. For you to time an accurate sunrise you must be able to see the actual blue sea horizon edge of the earth to measure the edge of the sun against and to take an accurate time. A one minute error in timing of a celestial observation results in a fifteen nautical mile error in the resulting computed longitude. This photo was taken on a day with really good weather but the clouds are obstructing the sea horizon so a sunrise observation would not have been possible and there is reason to believe that the weather was worse north and west of Howland on July 2nd. See: https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/discussions/the-myth-of-the-sunrise-lop

I do not claim "rescuers" , but it is clear , qualitate qua , and separating details from headlines , that searching along a line is more productive than searching at random , so if on a line and in distress : stay where you are is the word .

-------------------------------------------Just scroll up on this topic to van Asten's reply# 105 and you will see that he did "claim rescuers", this is just another example of Mr. van Asten's prevarications. Also scroll up to reply # 118. For those who might have come in late, see my prior post at:

The short answer, I can't believe he got his articles published because they are so full of errors. He wrote that he had a surface navigator review his papers prior to publication and I told him his problem was that he didn't have the papers reviewed by a flight navigator, the procedures are quite different.

Why would rescuers be "claimed" ? The NIF texts do not contain the rescue item , but it is clear from itself that if you leave the line you are flying along , without having definite coordinates , you obstruct future rescue operations , especially if no flight plan has been left behind @ departure .

Why would rescuers be "claimed" ? The NIF texts do not contain the rescue item , but it is clear from itself that if you leave the line you are flying along , without having definite coordinates , you obstruct future rescue operations , especially if no flight plan has been left behind @ departure .

---------------------------------

Yes, why indeed did you write those words? Scroll up to reply # 105 and read those words that you wrote.

Is there a way to move the posts regarding the discussion of black smoke making by USCGC Itasca to its own thread? I have comments regarding smoke based on my experience as an engineer in the Navy, but do not want to contribute to thread drift.

Is there a way to move the posts regarding the discussion of black smoke making by USCGC Itasca to its own thread? I have comments regarding smoke based on my experience as an engineer in the Navy, but do not want to contribute to thread drift.

Anthony, why don't you do the honors by starting a new topic about the smoke and post what it is you want to comment on. If you have the need, you can provide links to any other posts that you need to. There's no need for you to wait for someone else to set up a thread for you.

I want to know why the flight was so far south? Noonan was an "expert navigator" and was very professional in his work. So How could he have been so far off? Unless in the late 30's that was considered accureate navigating?

My opinion? If the plane is at Gardner there is only one likely explanation. Dead reckoning, using the techniques available at that time, would generate up to about a 10% deflection in latitude, even with a good sun line. Over 2500 miles this is 250 miles. FN most likely was not able to get a celestial fix during the night, for whatever reason. When the sun rose, he got an LOP. And that makes sense b/c that is all AE reported as far as position. But only one celestial object (the sun) means only an LOP with little or no information on latitude. It's not an exact fix. At the end of this dead reckoning run he was 250 miles south, southeast of Howland and 100 miles north, northwest of Gardner. They might have circled for a few minutes. Then they might have turned north for 50 miles on the LOP, then turned south for 100 miles and ran out of gas as they approached Gardner. This seems like the simplest explanation to me, and it doesn't require any more flying time than Elgen Long allows, much less than the TIGHAR hypothesis does. When her last words were heard ... "wait", was shortly before she probably saw what looked like ... Gardner island.

Then they died on the reef from injuries sustained from a witchy landing, exposure or some combination of both. What few transmissions were made were done off of battery power. Just one hypothesis. But I like it. ;-) And I came up with this trying to figure out how they ended up so far south b/c that puzzles me, too.

Monty; As I remember, for the radio transmissions to occur there had to be one engine running. As I remember those radio transmissions went on for 5 days so trying to transmit just on battery power would not be possible, as I understand anyway.

Monty; As I remember, for the radio transmissions to occur there had to be one engine running. As I remember those radio transmissions went on for 5 days so trying to transmit just on battery power would not be possible, as I understand anyway.

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